


That Time Rebecca Died (For A Bit)

by Centeris2



Category: Star Stable
Genre: F/M, it's okay no one stays dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 22:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16206686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Centeris2/pseuds/Centeris2
Summary: Justin and Rebecca's mission to destroy the Dark Core Platform goes awry, but Rebecca meets a new friend.(started as a tumblr writing prompt that I just kept adding to oops)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From tumblr prompt Jump, requested by an anon

Her crazy plan had worked. They hadn’t told the druids what they were doing, especially not after ostracizing Rebecca, but they had been successful. Rebecca’s research with her kallstones had paid off, and now she and Justin were making a mad dash for their lives as the entire Dark Core offshore platform crumbled around them. The boat waiting for them was far away from the platform, not wanting to be caught up in the explosions, and both Rebecca and Justin had flare guns to signal to their ride after swimming away from the wreckage they were leaving behind.

But first they had to get off the platform alive which was proving to be a bit difficult with Dark Core goons after them, the metal around them snapping and melting, and no doubt a very pissed off group of Generals ready to kill them.

“How pissed do you think the Druids will be when they find out about this?” Justin asked as he and Rebecca scrambled to outrun the men chasing them.

“Probably-“ she paused to punch a goon who had surprised them around a corner and made a grab at Justin, when her fist connected with him a shock when through the goon dropping him to the ground, “-very. But they’ll thank us later. Now move!”

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” Justin would have laughed at her order except for the part where they could die at any moment and he was the one currently leading them through the maze of walls that made up the interior of the platform. Having lived here and exploring every part of it he knew how to get through much faster than Rebecca would have on her own. That’s the only reason she let him come along on this adventure.

“JUMP!” he shouted a moment before he grabbed her hand and jumped over a crack in the floor where the metal had been ripped apart, leaving a hole going down several floors. The floor under them creaked and bent when they landed but held them up as they continued running.

“Thanks,” Rebecca muttered as they ran hand in hand, dodging wreckage and bullets. Three more turns and they were outside, the finish line in sight. The metal beneath them whined as it strained, the torque from the collapsing structure tearing the walkway apart and bringing the two saboteurs down with it.

Justin was lucky, he only felt the metal jerk down at an angle but it continued to hold his weight but his tight grip on Rebecca snapped him back as she fell. The weight of her body dropping into nothingness only to be stopped by his hand yanked on his body, slamming him to the ground but he instinctively held on, not about to let her go.

“I’ve got you!” Justin offered her his other hand. She swung up her other arm to reach for him and let out a yelp when the floor under Justin jerked down a few more inches, threatening to give way.

“You’ve got to let go!” Rebecca told him.  
“Give me your hand!”  
“It won’t hold for long-” she protested.  
“I’m not leaving you!” he insisted as she spoke, both of them frantically speaking over the other.  
“-let me go!” she let go of him, hoping he wouldn’t be able to hold her with just his one hand without her help.  
“We’ve got time-“ he slid closer the edge as the floor groaned.  
“No we don’t! Now go!”  
“Not without you!”  
“Justin, I promise if you let me go-“  
“No! Just reach for me!”  
“-I will be fine and-“  
“I can’t leave you!”  
“-you will see me again but only-“ she glanced back behind her, hearing the approaching goons that Justin was too focused to notice.  
“You’ll die! I can’t- can’t-!”  
“-if you let me go right now!” she tried to convince him it would be ok, tried to reassure him with her eyes and her words.  
“You have to come with me so we can escape!”  
“Now, Justin!”  
“We’ll get back and get ice cream!”  
“Justin, go!”  
“And I’ll ask you out properly and we’ll-“

Her eyes went wide and her jaw slack as he spoke, his words cut off by a gunshot. She continued to stare up at him but her eyes no longer saw him, her protests silenced by a growing red stain through her chest.

He no longer heard the shouts, the screaming, the gunshots, the fire. It was all background noise to the panic inside his head whirling into a tangled frenzy until the only thing left making sense in his head was “Justin, go! Justin, go! Justin, go. Justin, go. Justin, go, Justin, go, Justin.”

She disappeared into the emptiness, her hand still outstretched toward him as she fell. And as for Justin, he followed her last wishes and ran to the end of the Dark Core platform, fired the first flare, and jumped.


	2. Chapter 2

Midnightwarrior had been left behind. The druids would be suspicious if Rebecca took Midnightwarrior out in the middle of the night, and her mission with Justin was not druid approved. He didn’t like it, he wanted to be closer to his human, even if all he could do was wait on the boat for her to return. 

The Jorvik warmblood tried to appear calm and relaxed in the stall of Valedale. By now the mission must be nearly over, Rebecca would return to him soon.

 

“Justin, go!”  
“And I’ll ask you out properly and we’ll-“

Her eyes went wide and her jaw slack as he spoke, his words cut off by a gunshot. She continued to stare up at him but her eyes no longer saw him, her protests silenced by a growing red stain through her chest.

Midnightwarrior reared suddenly, screaming in pain. He felt the bullet tear through her, through him, blood and guts torn and thrown outside the body where it didn’t belong. He should have been there. He could have saved her. He couldn’t live without her. He couldn’t-

She disappeared into the emptiness, her hand still outstretched toward him as she fell. 

The air rushed past his skin, cutting through his coat, the cold sea salt slicing him as he felt everything and it burned. Everything was blood and rust and bile and salt and he had to get out he had to get out he had to get out get out get out get OUT!

Midnightwarrior slammed against the walls of his stall, bucking and kicking and hitting. The shrieks brought Claire into the dark stable, the noise waking other Valedale residents. He didn’t care about their shouts, their cries, their calls for a vet and help. The wood door exploded into splinters, the stallion rushing out and stumbling.

She was dead. He had to get to her. She couldn’t be dead. She wasn’t dead. If he could just get to her, if he could just keep his footing through the pain of his blood leaving his body, he just had to get to his soul. 

Ropes fell over him, he felt them digging into him, every touch nothing but pain and anguish and fury and wrath. He would make them pay. 

“Aideen help us,” Elizabeth muttered, the words cutting through the screaming in his mind and his mouth.

Aideen?

Help them?

Midnightwarrior’s screaming stopped, replaced by a heaving heavy breathing. The druids thought they were so blessed, so righteous. He hated them. They were vile hypocrites and he knew the truth. He knew the pain of iron piercing the heart. He knew the pain of his soul dying. And now he was living it again. ‘Aideen help us’.

He shifted, getting upright from the ground. He didn’t remember his body falling, only her’s. The humans who had gathered to help were visibly relieved, thinking he had recovered from some fit.

He would never recover from this, but he had clarity now. 

He watched Elizabeth approach, ‘Aideen help us’ she had begged. His mouth split open, his panting turning into laughter, his lips pulling back, stretching further and further back, allowing his jaw to swing open. He felt blood, tasted it in his mouth, his teeth growing to razor points, longer and longer as he laughed, staring at Elizabeth.

The druid woman stopped in horror, watching as Midnightwarrior’s skulls cracked and shifted, an orb of blood bubbling from the center of his forehead, growing and splitting into two that drifted apart, the bone underneath rippling and shattering and reforming as two piercing blood red eyes stared at her, black slits for pupils trained in on her.

“What in Aideen’s name…?” Elizabeth breathed, jumping back and falling to the ground when Midnightwarrior surged to his feet, legs to long, neck too thin, jaw unhinged in horrible laughter with fangs glistening and those red eyes that bore into her, seeing through her flesh and into her soul.

“She’s gone!” the voice screamed in their minds, deep and wrathful and thirsting for vengeance. Claire was one of the people who passed out from the pain and shock, Elizabeth crying on the floor and holding her head, feeling blood from her nose and ears. She saw Avalon, ever in his robes, trying to keep from totally collapsing. Other druids were doing the same, blood dripping and staining their hoods. 

Midnightwarrior reared up, bellowing in fury and hurt. Now that no doors or people stood in his way, he was free to go to her. He would find her. 

Elizabeth passed out as Midnightwarrior jumped over her, leaving the humans struggling on the ground. 

The sailors knew something was wrong when Midnightwarrior galloped into the fishing village, though he once more looked like a normal horse. They didn’t try to take him to the stable, instead watching the stallion as the stallion took up a position by the lighthouse, watching the sea where Dark Core was.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a terrible pressure on Rebecca as she drifted in darkness. She wondered if the afterlife was like this for everyone, or was it just her? It didn’t seem fair that her lungs burned and she felt like she was suffocating. She was already dead, shouldn’t the pain be over? But there was a pleasant hum below her, well maybe it was below her directions didn’t make much sense here. A sense of terrible weight, more than before, wrapped around her. Was something grabbing her? Well she couldn’t move anyway, and she was already dead, so why worry? 

She floated, guided by the pressure, drawn in some direction in the darkness. Her lungs continued to burn, she was aware that she couldn’t breath, and that her body still wanted to breath. That was strange. Perhaps since she had died falling into water her afterlife was her continuing in drown forever? While bleeding out? 

She didn’t like the afterlife so much. Drowning for eternity with a bullet hole through her chest was not something she wanted to experience.

A flicker of light caught her eye, but it darted away into the void. Great, now she was going crazy. 

There it was again! It-

A jellyfish?

The afterlife was populated with… jellyfish?

The bobbing jellyfish with flecks of light drifted by her, and Rebecca screamed.

Or screamed as best she could given she couldn’t breath.

The thing pulling her down was a giant tentacle.

Okay, she knew she hadn’t been that friendly with the druids but was she in Hell with Garnok? Had she really been that bad?

She wriggled and fought against the tentacle, but it was thoroughly tangled around her and bringing her down into the depths. She felt heat, hot water rushing past her face, and now she could see bits of light from volcanic vents in the ocean floor. 

The pain in her lungs began to subside, but she couldn’t tell if she was breathing. But she was dead, so she probably didn’t need to. The pain in her chest was fading as well, and the tentacle released her, withdrawing. 

“Safe.”

It wasn’t so much a spoken word as an emotion that flooded her, and she looked at her body in the light of the volcanic vents. She was coated in some sort of black ooze, left behind by the tentacle.

She tried to call back but nothing came out of her mouth, only a rush of water from her lungs. The tentacle withered, hurt and decaying as it retreated into cracks around the vents.

Had… had Garnok reached across dimensions? To help her?

She swam after the tentacle, her eyes stinging and she could taste flecks of rot from the decaying tentacle. Death was not going to stop her desire to learn, and curiosity couldn’t kill a cat that was already dead.

The tentacle disappeared into a chasm, a crack in the ocean floor that could very well be an abyss to another world altogether. She had to pull her way through the dark, feeling along with her hands as her eyes were useless here. 

The rocky tunnel gave way to emptiness, filled with the soft light of Garnok, giant eyes glowing green up at Rebecca. A single deep note hummed, vibrating her entire body.

“I sing now,” it was deep, old, barely words at all that echoed through her head and reverberated through her body. 

She didn’t understand, but somehow she knew what Garnok was saying so very important. She couldn’t guess what it was though as the water shook, a song so low she could barely hear enveloping her. She floated in the empty space above him, the song lulling her, the pain going away. She could breath, but she wasn’t breathing air, her lungs were filled with water, but it felt natural. The glowing from Garnok was blotted out by his tentacles, reaching up and holding Rebecca, wrapping her completely in his grip.

She wasn’t scared, even as she felt the black stick to her face and hair, even as she breathed it in.

“I protect you,” he sang, and she didn’t understand the emotions in her head. Were they his? They were feelings of such terrible loneliness, and pain, an eternity trapped and tortured and kept in the dark. But there was an intense, warm, even glorious fondness, solitaridity. No, that wasn’t right, it was more informal, more personal, more friendly.

She reached back and touched the tentacles, caressing them, wanting to understand. She knew the answer but she couldn’t remember. 

Garnok was scared, he wanted to go home, he didn’t want to be here, he wanted to be with his family, with Aideen, with his parents.

It clicked, Rebecca opening her eyes. She moved the tentacles from her face, now seeing the crisscross of seals and chains, symbols of druids holding Garnok in place, a web of pink magic caging him here. She recognized some of the symbols on the seals as those on the floor of the lake in Dino Valley, the ones leading to Aideen’s tomb. 

She looked at the tentacles around her, holding her, protecting her, and saw the pink pulsing through them, bright and painful and punishing Garnok for pushing past his prison to help her. 

Rebecca knew she had to save him. 

“I’m going to save you,” she spoke, knowing he could understand her feelings and her thoughts. No matter who she had to fight, no matter how many lifetimes it took, she would protect him and get him out of here.

How she was going to do that while dead she wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t doing him any good staying down under the ocean with him. 

The tentacles let her go, pulling back into the magical cell trapping him, but the music followed her out as she climbed through the darkness, back to the volcanic vents, and then up.

The further she got from Garnok the more the pain returned, and Rebecca didn’t know how she’d make it back to the surface, but she had no choice. 

Something nudged her in the darkness, Rebecca worried Garnok was going to pull her back down to protect her from pain. More things nudged her, getting under her, lifting her and carrying her to the surface.

As they got closer to the surface where light could shine she recognized a white face splashed with blue, and a tan face with a black heart, and a black and white face. How had her seals gotten here?

 

Fishers on an early trip were greeted with a strange sight of seals barking to them in the water. When one thought to shine a light on them they were shocked to see a woman in the water, supported by the seals.

Their shock increased when they pulled Rebecca aboard and recognized her, all fishers around Jorvik did after all. She was unconscious and not breathing, but they were able to get the water from her lungs, horrified when most of what came out of her was a thick black goo. 

“Mr. Sunstone,” Rebecca managed when she regained consciousness and had expelled enough water from her lungs to speak again.

“Miss Lightknight! What are you doing out here!?” the fisher demanded to know. 

“Mission went wrong,” Rebecca explained before she let her head drop to the deck of the ship, coughing up more black. She looked at her body, realizing the black was still there.

“Can you get this in a bucket for me? I want it,” Rebecca asked, gesturing to the goop covering her before she passed out. 

 

Midnightwarrior made his way down to the dock as the ship approached, sensing she was on board. The fishers helped her off the ship and presented her with a large jar of the black goop.

“You should go to a hospital!” Mr. Sunstone insisted when Midnightwarrior kneeled, making it as easy as possible for Rebecca to mount up.

“That’s the plan,” she promised, holding fast to Midnightwarrior, “thank you for getting me back!” she called before her and Midnightwarrior headed off.

\---

Justin looked down at his feet. He didn’t have the energy to raise his head. At least this way the redness and puffiness from his weeping was partially hidden. 

He had reported back to the Druids, which had surprised them because he was supposed to be in their prison. 

He had reported what he and Rebecca had done, which horrified them and led to a great deal of shouting.

He had reported that Rebecca had died, which was the worst of all.

The druids, for lack of a better term, panicked. They were furious, they were terrified, but worst of all they blamed Justin. He had not stopped her, he had left her, and the druids made no attempts to hide that they thought Justin had leaked the information to Dark Core, his grandfather still using him without his consent. And he had gotten her killed. 

They were not polite, they did not ask him to come with them to his cell. Justin didn’t care that they grabbed him and dragged him, not caring that he tripped and lost his footing. How was Justin going to tell the others? Would the druids execute him for this? He wanted them to. A bag went over his head, and something blunt hit him in the back of the head.

He woke up in a new cell, a new prison, cold and damp and dark. He wished he hadn’t woken up, holding his face, digging his nails into his flesh. The only thing he deserved to feel was pain, the only thing he wanted to feel was pain.


End file.
